Class, capital and social mobility: Israeli football players in the Egged Transport Cooperative

ABSTRACT

During Israel’s first three decades, Israeli football adopted the amateurism principle which prohibited football players from receiving any monetary or other compensation for playing football. Despite this prohibition, many top football players obtained sought-after jobs at Egged, Israel’s leading transport cooperative, along with shares in the cooperative. Using a Bourdieusian theoretical framework, this paper examines Israeli football players’ ability, most of whom came from the working or lower middle classes, to use the types of capital they amassed to improve their economic and social positions.

Introduction

During the first three decades of Israeli statehood, Israeli football was obliged to operate according to the principles of amateurism in sport, which prohibited football players from receiving any monetary compensation for playing football. Despite this prohibition, many top football players obtained sought-after jobs at Egged, Israel’s transport cooperative, along with shares in the cooperative. The financial rewards of working at the cooperative enabled these football players to improve their social status in Israel and escape the economic distress typical of the working class. The paper seeks to examine the process that enabled Israeli football players to enjoy economic mobility and social prestige. The analysis uses Bourdieusian theory to explore the limitations and possibilities available to these football players in the institutional context in which they operated, as well as to examine their ability to use different forms of capital to advance beyond the Israeli middle class.

Theoretical background

From the meritocratic perspective, the field of sport is a mechanism that offers vertical mobility to athletes who belong to excluded social groups or lower classes. According to this view, sport is the great equalizer, both because the rules of the game are the same for everyone and because the results of sports competitions are dependent only upon the talents and abilities of the competing athletes.¹ Various theoreticians have proposed contrary perspectives, according to which sport is a social field that reproduces class relations and blocks possibilities of moving from lower to middle classes.² These theoreticians stimulated a great deal of research that explored the various ways in which sport reproduces the existing social order.

Research embedded in the Marxist tradition stressed the fact that athletes are not the owners of the means of production, such that the only way for them to obtain financial capital in exchange for their talents and abilities is by selling their labour power to team owners and franchise owners.³ Studies based on neo-Marxist theory or Bourdieusian theory examined how engaging in sports legitimizes dominant ideological and cultural views and preserves the existing social structure. Examples of this include the practice of blocking people from participating in certain branches of sport by confronting athletes with insurmountable economic, geographic and social barriers,⁴ channelling athletes into branches of sport identified with their social and economic status,⁵ socializing young athletes to internalize the superiority of bourgeois norms and values,⁶ and more.

The major criticism of these reproduction approaches is that they are deterministic and do not give sufficient credit to the ability of social players to use the different forms of capital at their disposal to break through built-in limitations and improve their social status.⁷ Furthermore, Bourdieu’s theory of reproduction also allows room for dynamic social players who are capable of “intentionless invention of regulated improvisation” (Bourdieu, 1977:11).⁸ Hextrum⁹ accepted this criticism of Bourdieu and enhanced Bourdieu’s views by giving more credit to voluntarist aspects, noting that in certain social and institutional contexts athletes were able to apply the capital at their disposal towards social mobility and thus escape the fate dictated by their social position. The approach adopted in this paper is to take athletes’ built-in limitations into consideration while at the same time not disregarding their agency. To this end, we first describe the different types of capital found in the field of sport.

Bourdieu claimed that the position of various social players in their field of operation and in society as a whole is determined by the amount and relative weight of the capital they possess.¹⁰ This capital is what enables people to influence their fate and the fate of others. Contrary to many other theoreticians who focus on built-in reproduction, Bourdieu does not focus exclusively on financial capital. Instead, he refers to three other forms of capital: social capital, which includes an individual’s social ties and memberships in social groups and networks; symbolic capital, which reflects an individual’s prestige; and cultural capital, which includes various forms of legitimate information, cultural preferences, viewpoints and symbolic abilities. In this regard, Bourdieu identified three different categories of abilities: abilities that are objectified (e.g. literary and musical creations), abilities that undergo personification and become an inherent part of the human body (habitus), and abilities that are institutionalized (degrees and diplomas).

The hierarchical structure of society is reflected in an unequal distribution of resources, leading to differential distribution of capital among individuals and groups. Nevertheless, individuals and groups can use their abilities to amass additional capital in order to improve their position in the field in which they operate and convert one form of capital into another. However, these conversion abilities among social players are limited by the institutional context in which they operate. Different institutions can legitimize different forms of capital and determine the “rate of exchange” from one type to another.¹¹ This paper seeks to examine the ability of Israeli football players, most of whom came from the working or lower middle classes, to use the types of capital they amassed to improve their social position. To examine this question, we first describe the institutional context in which these football players operated and the options for converting capital offered to them by the legitimizing institutions.

Israeli football during the first three decades

During Israel’s first decades, two adjectives defined Israeli sport in general and Israeli football in particular: political and amateur.¹² From the political perspective, football was organized into four associations affiliated with political parties: Hapoel, controlled by the socialist Labour Party; Maccabi, affiliated with the bourgeois General Zionists party; Beitar, affiliated with the right-wing Herut Party; and Elitzur, sponsored by the Religious Zionists.¹³

Politics dictated all activities related to football, from the local clubs to the league games. A discussion of the battles between the sports associations is beyond the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that the rivalry between Hapoel and Maccabi began when the two organizations split in 1926 and continued until the end of the 20^th century.¹⁴ The research literature extensively discusses the ties between these sports organizations and Israel’s political parties. Suffice it to say here that the politicization of Israeli sport was based upon adherence to the principle of amateurism.¹⁵ Indeed, this principle was one of the only topics on which all the Israeli sports organizations agreed.

The principle of amateurism clearly separated sport from financial considerations by prohibiting athletes from receiving any compensation for their athletic activities.¹⁶ Over the years the International Olympic Committee battled against the incursion of professionalism and the ongoing attempts to bypass the amateurism principle, primarily in popular branches of sport. Under the control of the political parties, Israeli sports institutions adopted the principle of amateurism because it enabled them to dominate sport.¹⁷ So long as this principle remained in effect, the parties were able to sponsor and finance sports organizations, imbue them with values that served their purposes and enlist supporters from within. The parties relied on a variety of excuses and indirect payments to invest relatively limited financial resources in the organizations and their star players.¹⁸ Nevertheless, athletes’ loyalty to and dependence on the political parties was threatened by financial organizations that sought to enter the sports scene as well as the development of a prospering players market. At the same time, the public encouraged and supported the battle against professionalization based on values that were sacred to Israeli society at the time. Two main and interwoven contentions helped preserve the principle of amateurism in Israeli sport: one based on educational Zionist values and the other on moral values.

Reuven Dafni, the first director of the Israel Sport Authority, claimed that sport is an educational tool and therefore should not be placed in private hands. He believed that sport prevents delinquency, unifies the nation, and helps develop its fighting spirit.¹⁹ Emanuel Gil, one of the leading figures in Israeli sport, claimed that sport teaches young people to endure pain, overcome fear, remain calm and not retreat from the enemy. True athletes are taught to devote their bodies and souls for the sake of the positive objectives of the collective and not as individuals acting solely on their own behalf.²⁰

Because participating in sport served a national purpose by promoting the physical health of individuals and the nation as a whole,²¹ the state was hesitant to place the resilience and physical fitness of its citizens in the hands of private organizations. The belief was that those organizations would take money from the public to finance professional sport. Hence, those interested in sport as entertainment – in professional sport rather than in popular sport of and for the people – must also fund it. Such organizations have no right to demand that the public pay for this! True athletes are neither asked nor hired to engage in sport, and hence cannot make any material demands.²² Professional sport weakens the pioneering vision, encourages boorishness, reduces stamina, and improves the physical fitness of only a few, while neglecting the majority.²³

Education towards voluntarism in Israeli society also corresponded with the principle of amateurism in sport. Being willing to make a sacrifice for the good of the nation constituted a personal standard, a mirror in which citizens could see themselves and examine themselves relative to others.²⁴ This fervent devotion to the homeland was rewarded by admiration and respect, while those who pursued personal careers were subject to condemnation and humiliation. Indeed, Hapoel activist Meir Benayahu believed that a distinction should be made between athletes and those who dabble in sport. These “dabblers” tend to smoke, loiter and play cards. Even if they achieve a record in running or jumping or succeed in football, they are not worthy of being called athletes. They do not possess the mental and ethical attributes to complement their physical abilities necessary to earn the praiseworthy title of “athlete”.²⁵ Those who engage in amateur sport must work for a living and can only play sports in their free time. Work is the most important moral value in the lives of individuals and the entire nation. According to Gil, “turning a game into labour that supports the owners … poses a larger and more significant danger than the advantages, most of which are imaginary, that are liable to emerge from professionalism”.²⁶ Hapoel leader Yitzhak Ofek contended that the desire to please spectators leads to moral corruption.²⁷ Professionalism encourages cruelty, bribery, betrayal and emotional and social ruin.²⁸

Professionalism also violates the principle of equality, which was central value in the socialist ideology of the Labour movement and Labour party that dominated Israeli politics from the early 1930s till the end of the 1970s. Receiving compensation for training and participation in competitions transforms sports from a hobby to a profession, turning sports teams into employers and athletes into employees. Moreover, the financial dimension offers an advantage to wealthy individuals, thus tarnishing the humanitarian values of sport. An athlete who turns professional amasses capital by enslaving his body and abilities to money. At a meeting of the Knesset committee that considered motions to be placed on the agenda, a claim was made that professionalism was liable to lead to moral deterioration and to trading athletes on a “slave market”. .²⁹

Although these ideological arguments were stated frequently, on the practical level, the labour party did not want their affiliated sports teams to lose their top athletes to their rivals. While the formal principle of amateurism forced footballers to find sources of income outside sport, the sports institutions affiliated with the labour party, as the other parties, sought for ways to compensate the athletes in other ways, such as offering them jobs with economic and social benefits. Yet due to the athletes’ obligations to attend team practices and to travel to games abroad, only a few professions were suited to their lifestyle. One position that was highly in demand was the job of a bus driver for one of the transport cooperatives.³⁰

Football in Israel was run based on these values. The principle of amateurism forced footballers to find sources of income outside sport. Yet due to their obligations to attend team practices and to travel to games abroad, only a few professions were suited for their lifestyle. One position that was highly in demand was the job of bus driver for one of the transport cooperatives.

One hand on the steering wheel and the other on a rifle

From its inception, the Egged Transport Cooperative was considered an extremely attractive place to work.³¹ Moreover, Egged’s status as a sought-after workplace was reinforced by its sense of mission and national responsibility to realize the Zionist enterprise. Israel’s first years served as a defining period for Israeli society from the historical, social and national perspectives. During this period, Israeli society took shape and a national identity was formulated. Israel’s defence image was a major component of the Israeli ethos. Hence the military struggle became a factor that shaped Israeli consciousness and was central to the Israeli experience. The Egged cooperative enjoyed the type of prestige usually reserved for military combat units because the company placed its drivers and vehicles at the disposal of the IDF and even took an active role in Israel’s wars. While in other countries bus drivers were usually positioned at a low point on the social hierarchy, the special role played by Egged drivers in Israel’s nation building boosted their social status. Indeed, during Israel’s first years driving a bus often had higher status than many other professions, including physicians.³²

The Egged cooperative was established in 1933 as a merger of four small companies.³³ Hence, Chaim Nachman Bialik, Israel’s national poet, named the cooperative “Egged”, a word that signifies a bundle or a band. At the time of the merger, the four companies had a total of 963 members and employed another 20 salaried bus drivers. The cooperative operated 338 bus lines within Eretz Israel as well as lines to neighbouring countries – Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan and Egypt.³⁴ Over the years, other companies joined the Egged cooperative. The last in this series of mergers was with the Jerusalem bus cooperative Hamekasher.

Egged’s structure as a cooperative was a consequence of the reality of life in Eretz Israel. Under the difficult conditions prevailing at the outset of the 20^th century the Jewish settlers struggled to survive, while drying the swamps and defending against bands of rioters. They discovered that only through partnership and teamwork could they overcome these hardships. The notion of a cooperative perfectly suited the needs of the Hebrew Yishuv in that it embodied all of the pioneers’ aspirations: freedom, independence, productive work, mutual assistance and equality. Forming a cooperative granted each member equal status, an equal voice in management, independent work and cooperation among all.³⁵

During Egged’s early period, driving a bus was considered a pioneering act of no less importance than conquering the land and drying the swamps. Indeed, since its establishment Egged has been intertwined with Israel’s history and wars. Its public image was painted in military khaki colours, and its drivers were imbued with a Zionist pioneering halo. Even before statehood, bus drivers required a great deal of courage to operate public bus lines. Travel was dangerous due to the risk of ambushes by riotous bands. Drivers often drove with one hand on the steering wheel and the other gripping a concealed weapon next to the driver’s seat. Egged bus drivers showed a great deal of courage during the Great Palestinian Revolt of 1936–1939—a nationalist uprising by Palestinian Arabs against the institutions of the British Mandate and against Jews as well – by continuing to carry passengers on buses that went through hostile Arab villages.³⁶ In the period 1945–1946, Egged buses transported illegal immigrants from the coast to safety, despite the risk of being caught by the British authorities.³⁷

The War of Independence broke out on 30 November 1947, after an attack on two Egged buses. The day after the United Nations declared its plan to partition the British-ruled Palestine Mandate into a Jewish state and an Arab state, two buses that set out from Hadera and Netanya to Jerusalem were attacked adjacent to the Arab village of Fajja. According to the Egged website, seven passengers were killed in the attack.³⁸ During the war, Egged was under the authority of the Yishuv institutions, and its drivers were mobilized into the security services to help maintain contact with the Jewish localities. The buses encountered harassment on the roads and roadblocks. When the road to Jerusalem was blocked at Sha’ar HaGai, Egged’s armoured vehicles broke through the blockade and brought supplies and reinforcements to the city. The public was aware of the bravery of Egged drivers and the risks they took, and thus treated them with a great deal of admiration.³⁹

During the 1956 Sinai Campaign as well, Egged contributed to the war effort. Egged bus drivers transported IDF soldiers to the front and evacuated the wounded to hospitals.

Eleven years later, in 1967, Egged again joined the national effort, contributing to the IDF’s victory in the Six Day War. At the outset of the military campaign, an Egged representative was sent to the war room of the General Headquarters to coordinate troop transports. Egged transported battalions of soldiers to the fronts on the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Its vehicles moved along the front lines, where they were exposed to artillery shelling and sniper fire. More than once, the roofs of buses served as battle positions for soldiers and took direct hits. During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Egged again transported IDF soldiers to the front. Egged also placed around 800 buses at the army’s disposal to transport soldiers from one battle site to another and to transport prisoners back from the front. Often the buses travelled alongside the armoured corps and even took artillery hits. A convoy of eight buses travelling across northern Sinai was attacked by Libyan Mirage fighter planes but managed to reach its destination despite heavy damage to the vehicles.⁴⁰

Since its establishment, Egged sought to be perceived as an organization with a sense of national responsibility. Note that within the strict confines of Israeli society, a citizen’s status was clearly associated with participation in national missions. Egged publications show that the cooperative made frequent propaganda use of its contributions to the war effort. After the Yom Kippur War, the cooperative circulated the following slogan: “During peacetime and wartime, Egged is at the nation’s service”. This slogan was accompanied by pictures of buses from the battlefields of the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula that were now transporting civilian passengers.⁴¹ Due to the Egged cooperative’s contribution to national security and the recruitment of its drivers for the national effort, the Israeli public saw the cooperative and its drivers in a positive light. Thus, as reported on the Egged website, the common saying that every mother wants her daughter to marry a doctor or a member of the Egged cooperative was understandable.⁴² In addition to its positive public image, Egged offered other advantages that made top Israeli footballers yearn to work for the cooperative.

“Bring home a doctor or an egged bus driver”

During the 1950s, Israeli footballers in the top two leagues usually were from the lower middle and working classes. They did not have higher education, and a large portion had not even completed high school.⁴³ The principle of amateurism as described above prevented them from officially and openly earning a living from playing football. Yet rumour had it that football players received benefits that were against the rules in the form of payments under the table, travel expenses, bonuses, bar mitzvah celebrations for players’ sons and the like.⁴⁴ These indirect payments harmed the image of Israeli football, and particularly the players’ good name, leading some of them to seek alternative solutions to the economic distress forced upon them by the principle of amateurism. The players asked their teams to “arrange” jobs for them at a desirable workplace in compensation for their excellence on the playing field. One of the most sought-after workplaces was the Egged Cooperative. The prestigious status of being a member of the cooperative was inversely related to its formal admission criteria.

The formal criteria for Egged membership were seemingly modest relative to those of other coveted places of work: Israeli citizenship, membership in the Histadrut labour union, IDF service, knowledge of Hebrew, a licence to drive a bus, and age 32 or less. In practice, however, Egged made candidates traverse a long and tortuous route because the company wanted to create a community that maintained a common lifestyle. Only 30 percent of those who sought to join the organization were accepted, and of these only 85 percent successfully completed their training. Candidates had to undergo an extended two-stage trial period. In the first stage, which lasted six months, the candidate was under constant surveillance. After completing this stage to the satisfaction of those in charge, the candidate went on to the second yearlong stage, during which the examinations and observations continued. This trial period was intended to screen out candidates who saw Egged solely as a place of work and accept only those who saw the cooperative as a “warm and supportive family” and a “way of life”, as Egged defined itself in its advertisements. Indeed, for good reason the phrase “friends are only found at Egged” became a popular Hebrew catchphrase.⁴⁵

In addition, every driver who wanted to be accepted as a member of Egged with equal rights had to purchase a share in the cooperative. A share in Egged was an excellent investment and guaranteed the member’s financial future. The price of a share was usually calculated as half the price of a new bus, since two drivers worked in shifts on each bus. The share prices rose from year to year, often without any connection to the price of buses. In 1950 a share in Egged cost 2,000 Israeli pounds (I£). Two years later it rose to I£3,600. In 1953 a share went for I£6,000.⁴⁶ During the 1960s share prices rose considerably. As reported in Maariv, in 1962 the price of a share was I£14,800, in 1963 a share cost I£20,000, in 1966 – I£38,500, in 1969 – I£44,000 and in 1971 – I£50,000. In the period 1962–1964, 33 monthly salaries were needed to purchase a share, and from 1964 through 1970, 36 monthly salaries were required.⁴⁷ A 1970 study reported in the Al Hamishmar newspaper (22 February 1970) found that the capital returns on an Egged member’s share were over 30 percent annually.⁴⁸

During those years, Egged drivers’ salaries were among the highest in the public sector. In the first half of the 1960s, the average salary of wage earners rose gradually: 1961 – I£280; 1962 – I£320; 1963 - I£360; 1964 - I£400; 1965 - I£480.⁴⁹ Public sector employees who earned more than the national average monthly wage still earned less than the average monthly wage of Egged drivers, particularly drivers who worked overtime. The Haaretz newspaper (24 September 1961) reported that in 1961 the monthly salary of a diligent driver could reach as high as I£900. This salary did not include free bus rides granted to members’ families, tax payments the cooperative covered for amounts not recognized as official tax deductions (e.g. subsistence allowances), theatre and movie tickets, and subsidized meals at the company’s cafeterias, benefits that totalled an additional I£40–50 each month.⁵⁰ According to an article in Maariv (6 June 1972), in the summer Egged members could earn inflated salaries of up to I£1,650 for “summer efforts”.⁵¹ Note that only Egged members – those who owned a share in the cooperative – earned these high salaries. Indeed, Egged cooperative members earned 1.5 times more than salaried bus drivers, whose work conditions were also inferior to those of shareholders. As Alex Doron reported in the Maariv newspaper (11 December 1973), in 1973 salaried drivers earned I£36 per day and their status was temporary. Upon being hired to work at Egged, they had to deposit I£3,000 as a pledge for tickets sold to passengers. This amount was returned to them at the end of their employment period.⁵²

In addition to high salaries and flexible work hours, Egged membership offered other benefits as well. Egged members and their families were entitled to free bus rides, long vacations, sports and entertainment days, higher education and preschool tuition payments for their children, and the opportunity to purchase goods at cost in the cooperative’s stores. Egged also cultivated social elements and relations between the members’ families beyond work hours. Indeed, there was a good reason that Egged was called a “kibbutz on wheels”, for the children of Egged members absorbed the communal atmosphere from early childhood. They took part in social and recreational events, joined hiking groups, and were given gifts to mark special occasions such as bar mitzvahs, army induction and more. In the collective memory, the Egged summer camps are remembered as an example of well-organized summer activities for children. The first such camp was opened by the Egged branch in Netanya in 1959. For the next 55 years, these camps were a nationwide enterprise attended by thousands of children, until they closed in 2013.⁵³ The most prestigious perk for cooperative members was that their children were entitled to join the “next generation” of cooperative members.

“Either I get a share in egged or I leave the team”

Every morning at 5:00 am, Yehoshua Glazer took his seat behind the wheel and began his workday as an Egged driver on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem bus line. Glazer, a striker on the Maccabi Tel Aviv football team, was considered one of the all-time greats of Israeli football and an outstanding goal scorer on the Israel national team.⁵⁴ In October 1950 Glazer scored three goals, leading the national team to a decisive 5:1 victory over Turkey. He scored two goals in the return game held in December in Turkey, at which Israel was defeated 3:2.⁵⁵ Glazer’s performance made a substantial impression on Turkey, and in 1953 an agent from the Fenerbahçe S.K. team in Istanbul made Glazer an enticing monetary offer. The local press was up in arms. Major efforts were made to persuade Glazer to remain in Israel on Zionist grounds, but he only gave in to these insistent pleadings to relinquish a professional career abroad after he was promised a share in the Egged cooperative.⁵⁶

Glazer was not the only one. Many other elite footballers from the premier league and the national team chose to exploit their sports excellence to ensure their future as members of Egged and other smaller transport cooperatives. Among these were football stars such as Gideon Tish, Yehezkel Chazom, Doron Rabinzon, Haim Levin, Yaakov Rachminovitz, Asher Almani, Yitzhak Ashkenazi, Abraham Stemberg, Yitzhak Mizrahi, Ozri Levy, Gideon Mantzur, Arnon Rokman, Cobi Zeituni, Amatsia and Zohar Solomon, Eli Leventhal and others as well.⁵⁷ Most of them got what they asked for after threatening that if their team did not purchase them a share they would join another team. Teams that adhered to the principle of amateurism and refused to help footballers purchase a share in a transport cooperative risked losing players. According to an article in Maariv (27 August 1969), when Shimon Charnuha, a player on Betar Jerusalem, asked his team to pay for half a share in Egged valued at I£22,000, Reuven Rivlin, then chairman of the team and later President of Israel, replied that even football stars greater than him did not dare make such a demand. When Charnuha explained to Rivlin that he had to ensure his family’s future, Rivlin answered “I also once played football, and to ensure my future I stopped playing”.⁵⁸

The transport cooperatives were very happy to accept outstanding footballers as members because these players reinforced their image as prestigious places of work. Egged and Dan cultivated the cultural life of their members, especially sports activities. The workplace league attracted special attention. A great deal of tension surrounded these league games between workplaces, and they often turned into battle arenas. The climax was the final game in the workplace league. Usually the Egged and Dan cooperatives, which employed football players from the premier league, were the teams that advanced to this final game. These games attracted large crowds, public figures and celebrities.

The momentous derby of the workplace league took place in May 1957 between the teams from the Egged and Dan cooperatives. More than 6,000 spectators filled the stands, among them the heads of the cooperatives, coaches and many footballers. Both teams were composed of players and alternates from the Israel national team. The coach of the Egged team was Eliezer Spiegel, a national team player and assistant to national team coach Jackie Gibbons. Itzhak Schneor, captain and later coach of the national team, coached the Dan team. Football stars from that period filled the ranks of both teams. This prestigious game was decided at the last minute by Egged player Itche Menahem, a star player for Hapoel Tel Aviv and later chairman of the football association, whose accurate kick from 11 metres away won the game for Egged with a score of 1:0.⁵⁹

During the period discussed in this article, the Israeli public accepted the connection between excellence in football and membership in a transport cooperative and even saw it as natural. To outsiders, however, this connection seemed surprising, to say the least. Gyula Mándi, formerly a player on the Hungarian national team, was asked to coach the Israel national football team prior to the game against Yugoslavia in the Rome 1960 pre-Olympic tournament. The game was scheduled for 21 October 1959. The night before the game, Mándi went to a movie at the Hen Theatre in Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv. It was close to midnight when Mándi boarded the Number 5 Dan bus on his way home. About to pay, Mándi was surprised to see that the driver was none other than the team’s central defence player, Noah Reznik of Maccabi Tel Aviv. Reznik recalls:

He asked me what I was doing behind the wheel instead of at home. I told him that money to support myself doesn’t grow on trees. Mándi mumbled something, moved to the middle of the bus, and exited via the rear door. I had to drive to pay back the money for my share … ”.⁶⁰

Mándi had trouble understanding the reality of the lives of Israeli footballers. His efforts to promote football in Israel and to bring it to a level appropriate for international competition encountered many difficulties. Arranging and holding national team practices on a regular basis was a major challenge. Mándi found himself struggling to get players to attend practices because they chose to meet their obligations to Egged and Dan. For the players, representing the cooperatives in the workplace league was more important than practicing for national team games. Gyula Mándi set up a practice game in which the national team would play against the reserve team. Of the 32 players invited to this game, only 21 showed up at the designated time. The Haboker newspaper reported (31 January 1960) that most of the absent players were playing in the workplace league final game between Egged and Dan.⁶¹ Cancellation of the practice game raised the tension between the football association and the cooperatives, with each side claiming possession of the footballers. According to Maariv Lasportaim (1 February 1960), the Egged spokesman announced that if the scheduled dates of workplace league games clashed with team practices, the workplace league took priority.⁶² Only after extended negotiations were the game schedules rearranged to avoid such clashes. As reported in the Al Hamishmar newspaper (10 June 1960) to mitigate the tensions the Egged and Dan managements decide to donate uniforms to the national league teams.⁶³

Conclusion

Until the 1980s, bus riders were not surprised to see an outstanding footballer or even a star on the national football team in the driver’s seat. Indeed, during Israel’s first three decades, excellence in football and driving a bus were intertwined. So long as the principle of amateurism prevailed and earning a living from playing football was prohibited, a share in the Egged cooperative was a desired alternative means of compensation for outstanding footballers. Dozens of elite players from the top league conditioned joining or remaining on a team on the purchase of a share in one of the transport cooperatives. This article traces the factors that made Egged, the largest transport cooperative in Israel, such a desirable place to work: Zionist image, flexible work hours, high salary, long-term financial investment, and the family atmosphere nurtured among the employees. During Israel’s first three decades, football players belonged to the lower middle and working classes. For them, working at Egged was a way to bypass not having an education and provided them a golden opportunity that paved their way from the margins of society to its centre.

Top Israeli football players’ rapid route to the middle class presents a challenge to Bourdieu’s theory of reproduction. In an article examining the relationship between sport and social status, Bourdieu⁶⁴ claims that the capital and habitus of athletes from the lower classes cause them to participate, as athletes and as spectators, in sports activities that thwart their possibilities for meaningful social mobility. In this paper we join Giroux⁶⁵ in his criticism of the deterministic, generalized and homogeneous manner in which Bourdieu considered the capital and habitus of society’s lower classes. Israeli football players who became Egged employees and thus were able to purchase shares in the cooperative managed to overcome these built-in limitations and to escape the class reproduction that had been predicted for them. Several factors were involved in their success. It is true that their low social starting point and the principle of amateurism upon which Israeli sport was based prevented them from amassing significant financial capital. Nevertheless, they succeeded in improving their overall status by means of other types of capital at their disposal. First, the football players made use of their habitus as outstanding athletes. Their physical habitus was shaped in accordance to their class status, which most likely also channelled them into football rather than to other branches of sport identified with the upper classes in Israel. Yet instead of determining their class status, their habitus provided them physical capital that could be converted. This capital, which Shilling⁶⁶ contends is embedded in the body by physical and athletic activity, found expression in the outstanding physical abilities of elite football players and placed them in a position to bargain with the sports institutions. Their physical capital enabled them to acquire and use symbolic capital. It enabled them to win the prestige that sports fans and the Israeli public at large granted to star football players in Israel’s senior leagues. The football players also made use of their social capital. By engaging in sports, they expanded their social networks and developed social ties with the leaders of Israeli teams and sports institutions. As noted, the sports institutions sought to have it both ways – to maintain the amateur status of Israeli sport, which served their political interests, and at the same time to find alternative ways to compensate outstanding football players to prevent them from leaving the teams. Without this institutional agreement and support, it is unlikely that the football players would have been able to obtain what they wanted and thus enjoy significant social mobility.

The analysis provided in this paper seeks to update Bourdieu’s theory from several perspectives. First, the success of these Israeli football players demonstrates the ability of individuals or groups from the lower classes to develop agency and hence break through built-in barriers. We believe this ability suggests that Bourdieu’s deterministic interpretation needs to be tempered and toned down. Second, the findings in this paper serve to undermine Bourdieu’s generalized perspective. The paper focuses on elite football players whose habitus and symbolic and social capital differ from other individuals belonging to the lower classes in Israel. We claim that every class is also marked by variance in the resources available to individuals and groups, as well as in the possibilities for using these resources and converting them into financial capital. Disregarding this internal class variance is liable to lead to overlooking other factors that facilitate social mobility. Third, in accordance with Hextrum,⁶⁷ the findings of this study also show that converting one type of capital into another also requires agreement and even active support on the part of institutions.

It may appear that the last argument above somewhat undermines the perspective of voluntarism outlined above. Yet the changes in Israeli football since the 1980s contradict this. Cracks began to appear in the principle of amateurism in the form of institutional compensation for athletes, and the field of sport began undergoing other changes as well, among them the closure of centres for popular sport activities⁶⁸ and the new options for international play. These as well as changes in Israeli society as a whole led to the collapse of the political/amateur model of Israeli football and its replacement with a professional model based on commodification and privatization.⁶⁹ Israeli football players also did not imagine they would play a part, modest as it was, in the dramatic structural revolution of Israeli sport and the institutions under whose auspices it operated. Nevertheless, in terms of new institutional theory (DiMaggio, 1988),⁷⁰ their actions contributed to the deinstitutionalization of the institutions and structures, which enabled them to convert the capital they possessed. As a result, today it is hard to imagine elite Israeli football players driving a bus or even using public transportation in Israel.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Ashworth, “Sport as symbolic dialogue,” 40–6.

2. Bourdieu, “Sport and social class,” 819–40.

3. Beamish, “Labor relations in sport,” 187–210.

4. Allison and Barranco, “Women’s professional soccer players,” 457–69; Andrews and DeLuca, “Cyclical reproduction of capital,” 301–23.

5. Hextrum, “Amateurism revisited,” 111–123; Casey, Mooney and Smyth, “Class in girls” physical activity’.

6. Andrews, “Contextualizing suburban soccer,” 31–53.

7. Giroux, “Theories of reproduction and resistance,” 257–93; Jenkins, Bourdieu; Wacquant, “Social praxeology”.

8. Bourdieu, Outline, 11.

9. Hextrum, “Amateurism revisited”.

10. Anheier, Gerhards and Romo, “Bourdieu’s social topography,” 11–14.

11. Bourdieu and Passeron, Reproduction.

12. Galily and Kaufman, “Sport and the state of Israel,” 10–31.

13. Ben-Porat, From Game to Commodity, 91.

14. Carmi, Ha’askona..

15. See, for example, Kaufman, “The Debate During the Mandate Period Between the Hapoel Association and the Maccabi Union on the Issue of Participation in the Maccabiah Games,” 51–72; Haim Kaufman, “The Establishment of the Hapoel Sports Association,” Catedra 80(1996), 122–49; Carmi, Ha’askona..

16. Ben-Porat, From Game to Commodity, 27; Israel State Archives, Jerusalem (hereafter ISA), 6439/10 G, Amateur Regulations of the Football Association.

17. Ben-Porat, From Game to Commodity, 24–26.

18. Ibid., 101–3.

19. ISA 5548/5 G, Reuben Dafni to Itzhak Navon, 23 November 1959.

20. Gil, “Let Boxing Be a Sport and Not A Show,” Sport La’am.

21. Gil, Culture and Body, 163.

22. Shamir, interview with Emmanuel Gil, Lamerchav.

23. Gil, Culture and Body, 173.

24. Almog, The Sabra, 84–6, 115.

25. Benayahu, Here’s How I’ll Be Strong, 35–37.

26. Gil, The Story of Hapoel, 355–6.

27. Ofek, “Why a Two-Year-Old League,” Lamerchav.

28. Gil, “Sport and professionalism,” 3.

29. ISA 151/9C, Soher, Minutes Knesset Committee, 4 July 1962, 154.

30. Carmi, Ha’askona, 146; Carmi and Levy, “Lifecycles of sports clubs in Israel,” 885–7.

31. Michelson, Egged – Lines and Points, 198.

32. Jacobsen and Sadan, “Physicians and bus drivers in Israel,” 31–44.

33. ISA 63,945/1GL, Registration of Egged Cooperative Group Ltd., 5 April 1933.

34. Michelson, Egged – Lines and Points, 21.

35. Amar, “The Egged Cooperative”.

36. ISA 111/10N, Shabtai Greifman to President Zalman Shazar, 24 November 1966.

37. Lazar Litai, The Story of Aliyah Bet, 131.

38. Egged Website https://www.egged.co.il. Accessed 13 October 2021.

39. Naveh, “Contribution of public transport to steadfastness of Yishuv,” 320–419.

40. Michelson, Egged, 107–13.

41. Grossman, “Public transportation,” 26–7.

42. Egged Website https://www.egged.co.il.

43. Ben-Porat, “From game to commodity,” 102–3.

44. Ibid., 148.

45. Michelson, Egged, 73, 85.

46. Ibid., 34.

47. “Egged Members Earn,” Maariv.

48. “Profits from Egged Share,” Al Hamishmar.

49. Bank of Israel Report 1966, based on Central Bureau of Statistics data file:///C:/Users/udic/Downloads/p10.pdf.

50. “Salary of an Egged Member,” Haaretz.

51. “Egged Paid Inflated Salaries,” Maariv.

52. Alex, “Average Salary of an Egged Driver,” Maariv.

53. Weinstock, ‘”Days of the Egged Camps” https://www.egged.co.il/.

54. Zimri and Paz, Who and What in Sport, 85.

55. Abiram et al., Encyclopaedia, 572.

56. Ben-Porat, “From game to commodity,” 138.

57. Listing the names of the many football players who worked as bus drivers for the Egged and Dan cooperatives is beyond the scope of this article.

58. “Charnuha Demanded Betar Jerusalem,” Maariv.

59. Website https://www.football.org.il/magazine/?itemid=%7BA180A3F2-85C9-4800–8973-EC9C3A1088D7%7D.

60. Ibid.

61. “The National Team’s Cancelled Practice,” Haboker.

62. “Players from the Cooperatives”, Maariv Lasportaim.

63. “Sports Uniforms,” Al Hamishmar.

64. Bourdieu, Sport and Social Class.

65. Giroux, “Theories of reproduction”.

66. Shilling, “Physical capital and the production of social inequalities,” 653–72.

67. Hextrum, “Amateurism revisited”.

68. Carmi and Levy, “Lifecycles of sports clubs in Israel,” 870–91.

69. Ben Porat and Carmi, “First steps of professionalism in Israeli football,” 600–12.

70. DiMaggio, “Interest and agency in Institutional Theory,” 3–21.